(My husband, our four children, and I go out to a restaurant for dinner. We have impressed upon our children the importance of staying put in their chairs when we go out. Unfortunately, one of my children is a squirmer. He stays in the chair, but he twitches and wriggles around. As the waiter walks by, my son suddenly falls out of his chair and onto the ground; this happens all the time at home. The frightened waiter jerks backward, fortunately not spilling anything.)

Waiter: “I didn’t do anything! He just fell! I didn’t touch him, honestly!”

(I hold up my hand. He stops and stares at us with a scared expression as if he’s expecting us to go ballistic and blame him.)

Me: “It’s okay. Honestly. This happens all the time; I know you didn’t do anything. He just… falls out of his chair.”

(The waiter seemed shocked, if relieved, that we weren’t blaming him, and the service was exceptional for the rest of the meal, although I did notice that he went out of his way not to walk behind that particular child’s chair again. We left a big tip to make up for the shock he had received!)

When I’m fifteen, I have all four wisdom teeth out at once. I don’t see much point in whining or complaining about the pain, so I just set timers for when I can take my next dosage of pain meds — five total over-the-counter pills every six hours, plus an antibiotic three times a day — and distract myself with Disney movies and a Pokémon marathon.

The morning after the procedure, I’m drinking a smoothie and reading on my phone. My parents are having their own breakfast.

My mother turns to my father and says, “If you were in her place right now, you’d be bawling.”

This story happens when I’m quite small, about three or four years old. My parents have taken me to a children’s matinee at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. They were worried that I’d be bored, but apparently, I’m utterly enthralled.

At one point, a male and female dancer begin to perform a romantic pas-de-deux, and a small voice pipes up from the middle of the crowd, “Oh! The pretty lady loves the man!”

We’re sitting far enough back that the dancers don’t hear this, but a ripple of laughter moves through the audience nearby. An usher hurries over and asks my father to take me to sit at the back, and he complies.

Another scene is circus-themed and features a clown putting on his clown suit. Midway through, the same small voice rings out again. “He’s putting on his jammies!”

More laughter from the audience. This time the usher asks my dad to remove me from the audience entirely. 

As my dad says, this was clearly the beginning of my career in media analysis.

(I have Asperger’s syndrome, which is a form of autism. When I was a kid in the 90s, both were not very well understood. One of the aspects of Asperger’s is that those with it tend to focus exclusively on their interests and likes, such as video games. It’s getting close to Halloween, and while watching TV I see several commercials for M&Ms. I know what I want to be that year.)

Me: “Mom, I know what I want to be for Halloween!”

Mom: “What do you want to be?”

Me: “An M&M! The red one!”

(My mom is confused, as my favorite color is green. If I can get it in green, I get in in green. I am the kind of kid who only eats his breakfast in one specific bowl — the green one in my case.)

Mom: “Why do you want to be the red one? Wouldn’t you want to be the green one?”

Me: “I can’t be the green one. She’s a girl.”

Mom: “How can you tell?”

Me: *straight face* “She has eyelashes.”

(That was good enough for Mom, who was a little surprised the green one was a girl and made me a really awesome — red — M&M costume.)

Several years ago, my wife and I were going out to eat with a friend of ours and the friend’s three-year-old daughter. [Friend] needed money from an ATM and to get something for [Daughter], so we went to a grocery store. It was really busy — Friday night rush hour — so my wife went into the store to find the item while [Friend] used the store’s ATM and I drove laps around the parking lot with [Daughter]. 

On one of the laps, a car quickly came out of a row without looking, and I had to brake hard to avoid hitting them. It wasn’t the first idiot driver I’d dealt with in the last several minutes, so my temper got the better of me, and I muttered, “Stupid f***.” I must have been louder than I thought, because I immediately heard “NOOO!” from the back seat. 

I had to laugh at being lectured by a three-year-old.